The Long Road Towards Independence, Justice and Peace for the Basque Country

Sunday, April 29, 2007

Allowed to Participate

Seems like clown judge Baltasar Garzón has discovered the sliced bread. He says that there is no links between ANV to ETA nor to Batasuna. All of this charade framed within the Franco style Spanish Law of Political Parties, a painful reminder that in Spain the political class is all too kin on slipping back to the authoritarian style regimes of their recent past.

A recently revived Basque political party will be allowed to operate after Spanish authorities could find no links to the armed group ETA or its outlawed political wing, a top judge said Saturday.

The Eusko Abertzale Akintza-Action Nationalist Basque party (EAE-ANV) can legally operate and will not be subject to the ban applying to the Batasuna party, judge Baltasar Garzon ruled.

He based his judgment on a police report that said, "We cannot determine that ANV is an instrument of ETA-Batasuna, even though it has some affinities in terms of its goals."

Garzon said in a written decision that certain elements of the party seem to show "the proximity, the influence and the possible participation of Batasuna ... in the preparation of electoral lists." But he said the party's leaders did not have links with ETA.

The EAE-ANV was one of the founding elements of Batasuna in 1978, but had been inoperative until recently. Its sudden revival to put up candidates for May 27 municipal and regional elections aroused suspicions that ETA's political wing was trying to sneak into the polls.

Batasuna has been prohibited as a party since 2003 because of its ties to ETA, which has been blamed for over 800 deaths in its four-decade campaign to achieve independence for the Basque region in northern Spain and southern France.

ETA's political arm won 10 percent of the vote in regional elections in 2001 and 20 percent in 1999 municipal elections.

In March, Batasuna presented a new party, Abertzale Sozialisten Batasuna, to contest the May elections, but it too is expected to be banned, as are supposedly apolitical "citizen lists" inspired by Batasuna.

A candidate on one of the lists, Gorka Murillo, was ordered detained by Garzon Saturday for suspected membership of ETA, following his arrest in the northern province of Navarra.

Documents allegedly found at his home included photographs of Spanish military vehicles, suggesting possible targets for a new armed ETA unit said to have been smashed by police at the end of last March.

Batasuna leader Joseba Permach said Saturday the pro-independence movement's absence from elections would mean "an enormous failure" for the peace process, according to Basque newspaper Gara.

ETA declared a permanent ceasefire in March last year that was shattered by a December 30 bombing at Madrid airport. The bombing wrecked tentative attempts by Spain's socialist government to engage in a dialogue with ETA on reaching a political settlement for the region's future.

Amazing, check out this paragraph by renown torturer Garzón:"even though it has some affinities in terms of its goals."

Those goals being the goals of a large portion of the Basque people, the self determination of their nation. So, by that reasoining, every single Basque that wishes for his or her country to be free from the occupation of Spain and France has affinities with ETA, what a twisted logic I would say, but that is infamous judge Garzón for you.

And how about the last paragrpah, it is useless to try to get these so called journalists to stop repeating the propaganda that Madrid feeds them.